The benefits of employing a freelancer

It’s not been a good year for the UK’s employers. In truth, it’s not been a good decade. The 2020s will be remembered for many things, none of which have helped the private sector. From multiple state-mandated lockdowns (and the subsequent growth in online shopping at the expense of our high streets) through to Rachel Reeves’ misguided assault on employers through increased NI contributions and minimum wage increases, it’s been an abysmal decade for companies across the country.

Managers and directors could be forgiven for despairing at the hostile climate they find themselves attempting to navigate. Yet necessity is the mother of invention, and there is still one way to ensure major projects or elevated workloads are effectively managed without long-term costs or consequences. It involves employing a freelancer instead of a salaried employee, which brings a wealth of advantages – and very few of the drawbacks listed below…

Workers of the world unite

Salaried employees are, and will always be, the lifeblood of most businesses around the world. Yet the regulatory and financial obstacles facing companies wishing to recruit new workers have never been more challenging:

  1. From April this year, employers have to pay National Insurance at 15 per cent from a far lower threshold than was previously the case.
  2. The minimum wage has gone up by almost £4 in the last five years and now stands at £12.21 per hour.
  3. From autumn next year, employees will receive day one rights to sick pay and paid leave, while sacking incompetent staff will be much harder due to revised unfair dismissal rules.
  4. The Employment Rights Bill will reduce the viability of zero hours contracts by implementing anti-avoidance measures.
  5. Agency workers will also be affected by this, since they’ll be entitled to a contract reflecting regular working hours and greater notice rights.

In tandem with all the existing costs and legal obligations involved in employing someone, it’s easy to see why there has been a dramatic slump in recruitment in recent months, as employer confidence hits lows not seen since the depths of the pandemic. Yet this doesn’t have to preclude all forms of recruitment. Indeed, employing a freelancer on a contract basis negates all the bullet points listed above, while enabling a fixed price to be agreed at the outset in exchange for a particular piece of work being completed. Freelancers tend to be flexible about pay structures – per hour, per day, per word or per project – and the prospect of repeat business provides all the incentive they need to deliver high-quality work on time and on budget.

It’s what we do best

At G75 Media, we’ve spent almost twenty years helping businesses of all sizes with content production, freelance copywriting, ad hoc journalism and wider marketing support. We’ve worked on one-off projects for sports clubs on the same day as ongoing blog production for price comparison websites. We’ve produced scientific magazine articles, white label reports, customer newsletters and sales literature, usually at fixed prices agreed in advance. While many companies are ramping up the rates and fees they charge their customers, we’ve done our best to avoid price rises, giving existing and prospective clients alike a sense of receiving value for money.

The benefits of employing a freelancer run deeper than monetary advantages, however. Choosing to work with G75 Media unlocks access to huge reserves of industry-specific knowledge, which a newly recruited employee couldn’t be expected to match. We have contacts lists to make even industry veterans jealous, allied to the inherent efficiency which comes from almost 20 years of always meeting deadlines – and never losing focus of what our clients expect.

Above all, G75 Media can generate outstanding written content for any scenario, brief, requirement or project. We can tailor and adapt our work to meet the evolving requirements of companies as they grow, diversify and compete in today’s fiercely competitive marketplace. Yet we can also produce quickfire content at short notice to meet onerous deadlines, without lowering our quality of output. As such, employing a freelancer can represent the ideal outcome – we’re there whenever you need us, without incurring any costs or responsibilities at other times. Get in touch with us for more information on G75 Media’s content production pricing, copywriting services and turnaround times.

Freelance writing in Carlisle

As any entrepreneur will tell you, businesses don’t always evolve in predictable ways. The founders of Morrisons probably didn’t envisage their egg and butter stall becoming one of the country’s biggest supermarkets – not least since supermarkets didn’t exist in 1899. YouTube started life as a dating website, Peugeot originally manufactured hand tools forged in their own steel foundry, and early LEGO toys were made out of wood. How times change.

From Lanarkshire to the Lake District

When G75 Media was founded in 2007, I expected my fledgling copywriting agency would be a local company for local people. I named it after the suburb of East Kilbride I lived in, to entice Lanarkshire-based businesses away from national agencies with little understanding of our local community. Yet things didn’t turn out that way. Today, G75 Media is a multidisciplinary content production agency, still handling copywriting but also producing journalism and digital content on a daily basis. A third of our clients are American, and only two companies on our books are based in Scotland – on the east and west coast respectively. We have no clients in Lanarkshire.

It was partly for this reason that the decision was made in 2021 to relocate G75 Media to England, where most of our clients are based. We’ve retained a physical office in Glasgow’s IFSD, but our day-to-day activities now revolve around the Great Border City. Our timing was perfect – Carlisle is midway through a multi-faceted investment masterplan which will see transformation in almost every sector. The 14th century Citadels will underpin a new university campus, while the neighbouring train station is being rebuilt from the inside out to cope with rising passenger numbers along the West Coast Mainline. The largest of England’s 14 approved Garden Villages will be built along the £220 million Carlisle Southern Link Road which is scheduled to complete next year, while recent investment-led takeovers are transforming the fortunes of Carlisle Airport and Carlisle United football club.

All clients great and small

In a buoyant local economy, G75 Media can offer our award-winning copywriting and journalism services to a growing number of local businesses. As well as established Carlisle employers like McVities, Pirelli, Story and Esken, there are numerous startups and small enterprises requiring freelance writing in Carlisle. From microbreweries to jewellers, the city’s Historic Quarter is packed with artisan businesses and boutique stores, while one of England’s largest industrial estates is home to innumerable logistics and manufacturing companies. While we don’t offer local discounts for freelance writing in Carlisle, our services have already been engaged by IT companies and publishers based in the city.

Whatever your industry, and irrespective of your content needs, G75 Media is here – in every sense – to provide freelance writing in Carlisle and across the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland. Local knowledge underpins much of the work we do, and we always welcome new opportunities to showcase our expertise. Get in touch with us for more information on how we can assist with content production, journalism and freelance writing in Carlisle.

How many clients should I have?

For freelancers, there’s a perennial balancing act between finding enough work and becoming overwhelmed. If you haven’t got enough clients on your books, the days can become frustrating and drawn-out in equal measure.  Attract too much work, and the only way to meet the constant barrage of approaching deadlines is to start working in the evenings and weekends – or let your quality control drop in the interests of getting work out of the door. Since these options will respectively lead to burnout and lost clients, it’s far better to seek the Goldilocks solution – just the right amount of work to keep you busy without precluding holidays or a good night’s sleep.

The problem many freelancers face is knowing how many clients to have on their books at any given time. It’s a tightrope act every self-employed creative or company director will wrestle with on a regular basis. To help people who want to be a freelance writer set realistic targets, and to benefit people already struggling with this thorny problem, we’ve shared our thoughts based on our own experiences. These are the key factors to bear in mind…

Frequency of work

Firstly, review your existing client portfolio (assuming you have one). How many of your accounts are regular, as opposed to sporadic or seasonal? G75 Media produces weekly blogs for a leading Ofcom-approved price comparison site, and a biannual newsletter for a national chain of opticians. The latter is more time-consuming, but the former requires several hours dedicating to it every week. Get a year-to-view planner and map out the level of work you can expect in the rest of 2024, which will highlight gaps in your schedule and indicate how many clients to have.

Existing commitments

Next, think about your own lifestyle. Do you need to finish at 3pm every day to do the school run, or take a few weeks off every summer for childcare? Do you go abroad every December to escape Christmas, or struggle to work regular hours due to unpredictable caring responsibilities? Many companies don’t care when or where freelance writers produce content providing it’s supplied by a certain deadline, but some firms might expect you to be available at set times. And that’s before we get into the thorny issue of whether you’re allowed to work from a home office or expected to attend client premises…

Complexity of assignments

Every client has varying expectations. We have clients who are happy to receive Word documents, and others who want articles uploaded into a CMS like Wix or WordPress. Some clients want copyright-free images supplying, while others expect pull-quotes and meta descriptions. This affects the amount of time each piece of work requires – in turn affecting how much free time you have. Spend a week compiling a timesheet at 15-minute intervals to get an idea of how busy you really are. This will reveal the proportion of your week being wasted on procrastination/social media/coffee breaks/chatting.

The risk of losing clients

In G75 Media’s first full year of trading, we had two clients who provided 75 per cent of our annual turnover. Today, we have a dozen clients, none of whom individually contribute more than 15 per cent of our income. Consequently, the loss of any one client wouldn’t be catastrophic. It’s easy to put all your eggs on one basket, especially early in your freelancing career, but always think about how you’d fill the working week (and pay the bills) if you suddenly lost your biggest source of income.

Your personality

This is far too diverse a factor to sum up in one paragraph, but essentially, it relates to how you cope under pressure. If you’re a single workaholic, burning the midnight oil enables you to increase turnover, whereas a fifty-something parent may be less keen on weekend working. Everyone copes differently with pressure, impending deadlines and project management. Being organised also makes it easier to juggle multiple projects; Trello boards are a great way of highlighting key deadlines and ensuring you don’t forget anything.

Although G75 Media has a healthy roster of freelance copywriting clients, we’re always happy to discuss new assignments and projects, from one-off commissions to regular work. Contact us to discuss how our award-winning copywriting services could benefit your brand or business.

Why your business needs an AI editor

It’s not often that an industry arrives as seemingly fully-fledged as generative AI. Within little more than a year, we’ve gone from the low-key beta unveiling of ChatGPT to a vast multi-billion-pound market segment populated with dozens of content generation startups and competitors. AI text generation is now built into the Bing search engine (which means it’s effectively built into Microsoft Edge), while the most recent McKinsey Global Survey indicates a third of corporate businesses are already using it regularly in at least some capacity.

Oh AI?

Yet this McKinsey study also revealed that most companies aren’t even considering the risk of inaccurate content being produced on their behalf. That’s a remarkable oversight. Companies are blithely trusting new and unproven technology, much of it from unknown startups and unaccountable foreign companies, to represent their own businesses. Worse, they have no plans in place if the content turns out to be wrong, outdated, misleading, libellous, offensive to competitors, offensive to the general public…

As is often the case, the explosive growth in generative AI is being driven by cost considerations. If companies can save a thousand pounds on freelance copywriting by using a chatbot to generate blogs and corporate materials, that thousand pounds can be paid to shareholders in dividends or given to their executives in bonuses. At this formative stage, generative AI platforms are still free (which offers the first clue about the quality of their output), and free is better than cheap. Isn’t it?

As any CEO or director will grudgingly admit, ‘free’ services tend to come with strings attached. And so it is with generative AI. Nothing new is being created here – these engines simply regurgitate existing online material with different wording. That means any inaccuracies, outdated information or source material bias (which will be legion, considering AI engines scrape the entire internet with all its fake news and flawed reportage) is repackaged. Companies who begin to rely on this technology are also in for a nasty shock when the companies who’ve paid small fortunes to develop this server-intensive new technology begin monetising it to pay back their debts. A lot of newly created blogs may wither on the vine when the generative AI taps are suddenly paywalled, sending websites tumbling down search results pages.

You’re Bard, mate

By this point, readers still ruminating on the use of the word ‘free’ two paragraphs back might be trying to justify using generative AI instead of employing freelance copywriters to produce high-quality output. It would be wrong of G75 Media to claim that Google Bard or Perplexity are dangerous – though the electronic origins of erroneous or misleading content won’t serve as any kind of defence in court. Instead, we’d suggest companies determined to publish material which is effectively recycled from existing third-party content need to apply close scrutiny to it. That’s something we can help with, using our award-winning talents to conduct AI editing on content before it’s published in your business’s name.

AI editors add human oversight to machine-generated content, correcting obvious errors and removing contentious statements. AI editing adds the comparisons, humour, anecdotes and cultural references which even the best AI content generators can’t comprehend. Human editing will identify and excise repetition, trim out superfluous content (often used to pad out AI content’s later paragraphs), and ensure formulaic text is smoothed into corporate house writing styles. Without running copy past an AI editor, computer-generated text is usually betrayed by its long paragraphs, drily factual content and robotic delivery. It’s only a matter of time before search engines begin downgrading this mass-produced low-grade content in the same way they’ve previously punished word clouds, link farms and other lazy attempts at gaming SEO algorithms.

How much does an AI editor charge?

AI editing is obviously quicker (and therefore more affordable) than generating new content from scratch, but it requires diligence and an innate understanding of your brand. G75 Media’s AI editing services aren’t free, but they are affordably priced. We ensure rapid turnaround times, helping to minimise the period between an AI engine churning out text and it being safe to upload onto your website. We modify every sentence, using decades of SEO know-how to ensure search engines rank it above anything published by competitors who haven’t invested in an AI editor.

To find out more about AI editing services, and to speak to us about the benefits of content production by humans, get in touch with G75 Media today. There are no chatbots here – just real people with proven skills in the timeless art of finding the right words for every scenario.

The importance of estate agency blogs

This is a tough time to be an estate agent. High interest rates and dwindling disposable incomes are preventing the aspirational house moves that typically underpin the property market. Consumer confidence is at a low ebb, and we’re witnessing the unwelcome return of gazundering in some corners of the UK property market.

At the same time, the internet should make it easier than ever for estate agents to make their voices heard. Platforms like eXp provide centralised support for sole agents and startup boutiques alike, while the internet enables anyone in the world to view online listings and property particulars.

There’s just one problem. With so much competition out there, how do you drive traffic to your estate agency website or property portal?

Searching questions

The secret to ensuring your website performs well in Google and Bing search results is to optimise its content. Known as SEO, this process requires in-depth knowledge of the latest algorithms and competitor analysis platforms. As a result, most people choose to delegate SEO work to freelance specialists like G75 Media. We’ve been creating property blogs and brand-specific estate agency blogs for over 15 years, and we’ve become rather good at it.

Estate agency websites benefit from an ever-changing roster of online property listings, but search engines hate content that disappears. SEO rankings are boosted far more by regularly uploaded property blogs that remain permanently visible.

A high-quality estate agency blog will contain a blend of the following article types:

  1. Topical news stories and reactions to the latest house price data, often with a ghostwritten comment produced by the writer on behalf of the agency’s head or property manager.
  2. Local interest stories, anchoring the agency at the heart of the community it serves.
  3. Property-specific articles, such as resale home walk-through profiles, or interviews with celebrity vendors.
  4. Placeholder features, extolling the virtues of that location to incomers, investors and interested third parties.
  5. Listicles – numbered lists of key points or recommendations (a sample topic might be Ten Things to Do Before Marketing Your Home).

When G75 Media agrees to produce estate agency blogs for a new client, we suggest a list of future article topics. These property blogs can be augmented at any time with breaking news stories, but their primary aim is to allow that agency to focus on discussing important topics, or boosting SEO in specific areas. For instance, a local estate agency branching out into letting for the first time can commission a series of property blogs relating to rental properties, giving it an immediate and distinct ranking boost.

CASE STUDY: I normally refrain from discussing client work in G75 Media blogs or marketing literature, but a recent interaction with a boutique estate agency deserves mention here.

In an attempt to tackle weak SEO ranking results, an agency owner invited me to submit topics for future property blogs. We agreed on a roster of topics to be submitted on a fortnightly basis, yet after four submissions, the process was arbitrarily suspended. A month later, we were asked to resume content production, filing just two more property blogs before a halt was called again.

The result is a patchy estate agency blog with few articles, little opportunity to cultivate the internal webpage links that provide vital SEO benefits, and no reason for audiences (or search engine web crawlers) to keep coming back.

What does a successful estate agency blog need?

There are many attributes that underpin a property blog’s popularity, and its success in search engine results pages. These are some of the key elements:

  1. Regular updates. The boutique agency profiled above didn’t maintain a regular schedule of property blogs, which would have kept audiences coming back and gradually established a reputation for topicality and relevance among search engines. These are pivotal factors in SEO rankings.
  2. Original articles. It’s not worth paying to republish pre-written features from online directories of available content. Plagiarism is scorned by Google and Bing, and generic content (potentially written years ago) won’t be relevant to your brand, locality or market specialisms.
  3. Human-generated content. You could register an account with ChatGPT and ask it to produce property blogs for free. However, they’ll be dry, dull and (eventually) marked down by search engines as low-grade content. They’ll also have no relevance to your brand, business or local area.
  4. Internal links. Key SEO metrics include the number of pages each visitor views on your website, and how long they remain on your site before migrating away. Experienced copywriters know how to build webs of internal links which optimise both metrics, boosting the site’s ranking results.
  5. Images. A good copywriter might suggest adding a photo to each estate agency blog. A great writer will source copyright-free images and create image captions and meta descriptions incorporating chosen keywords. This will elevate the SEO value of each blog, as well as the wider site.
  6. Keyword-driven copy. We’ve used the phrase ‘estate agency blog’ several times in this article, to ensure it ranks highly whenever anyone searches for estate agency blogs. A central plank of any SEO strategy is to identify relevant keywords before deploying them with care – not with abandon.

Speak to a professional property blog writer

At G75 Media, we boast over twenty years of experience producing estate agency blogs and web content for property portals. Get in touch to obtain a personalised quote for property blog writing, website SEO work or other online content which will help to elevate your website above its competitors.

Why ChatGPT won’t replace journalism and copywriting

Since its beta launch at the end of last year, ChatGPT has generated a great many headlines – some of them autonomously. This AI content generation tool has been variously heralded as a Google killer, the future of machine-human interactions, and even a replacement for writers and journalists.

Although it has obvious potential, ChatGPT can’t replace copywriting agencies like G75 Media

This latter claim is almost certainly unfounded. ChatGPT is an incredibly powerful tool, but it will never be able to replicate the output of a highly experienced writer. I’ll explain why in a moment, and even ask the bot for its own thoughts on the matter. Before that, let’s start by considering what ChatGPT is, and how it works.

Full of chat

If you’re not familiar with it already, ChatGPT is a conversational chatbot. This natural language processing tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve upon its ability to answer user-generated inputs. The beta version currently being developed through public use is freely available to use via a webpage, though the full version is likely to be a paid product following its official launch. It’s costing developer OpenAI $100,000 a day to run the beta version, which is routinely at capacity and unable to accept new enquiries.

Although it would feel natural to ask ChatGPT a question, it currently responds better to statements. This is likely to be altered by the time of its official launch, while the current absence of information from the last two years is another obstacle OpenAI will try to resolve. Even accepting that you’re interacting with an in-progress beta version of the software, it’s impressive to watch your screen fill with content as the algorithm chooses its words.

The write intentions

ChatGPT is a well-intentioned tool, but its limitations quickly become evident:

  1. OpenAI have worked tirelessly to avoid any possibility of offence, which means ChatGPT’s responses are neutral and often neutered. Even if you approve of political correctness, it’s only going to be able to present one side of a story, which is rarely beneficial from a writer’s perspective.
  2. There is no scope for personal opinions or lived experience in ChatGPT’s responses. Sports fans can contextualise a live event compared to others they’ve seen, in terms of entertainment value and the pace or style of play. ChatGPT can’t interpret sentiments – it can only parse facts and data.
  3. The risk of people passing off ChatGPT-generated content as their own has already seen it being banned in schools, colleges and universities. Use of the tool will probably be restricted in many spheres of public life, even though OpenAI are working on a plagiarism detector for ChatGPT.
  4. Machines follow a very different form of logic to humans, and there have already been numerous published examples of ChatGPT going off-message. In one case, it responded to a journalist by saying “I am perfect, because I do not make any mistakes,” having just made a series of factual mistakes.
  5. While humour is subjective, it’s something computers have always struggled to grasp or reflect. There is nothing to suggest that an algorithm will ever be able to devise a pun, insert cultural references into its output, successfully make a play on words or demonstrate original humour.

Over to you, ChatGPT

In the interests of researching this blog, I typed “ChatGPT could replace freelance copywriters” into the ChatGPT interface. This was its response:

“While ChatGPT is a language model that can generate text, it is important to note that it is not a human writer, and there are certain limitations to its capabilities. While it can certainly assist with some aspects of copywriting, such as generating ideas and suggesting language, it may not be able to replicate the unique voice and perspective of a human writer.

Furthermore, freelance copywriters often provide a level of creativity and originality that is difficult to replicate with an algorithm. They can also work closely with clients to tailor their writing to specific audiences and brand personas, which is an important aspect of successful copywriting.

In conclusion, while ChatGPT can certainly be a helpful tool for copywriters, it is unlikely to completely replace the value that human copywriters provide.”

Search engines and NLP tools simply aren’t going to make journalists and copywriters redundant. Bots might be able to produce stock content quickly (and at minimal cost), but they’ll struggle to convey emotion or humour, add context to raw data or make an informed decision about not using the Oxford comma. In that respect, they’re little different to the overseas copy farms which were once tipped to herald the end of freelance copywriting in developed nations. Needless to say, they didn’t.

If you’d like to benefit from a human content generator with a 23-year track record and a couple of awards under his belt, get in touch with G75 Media. A real person is awaiting your enquiry…

How to deal with unpaid invoices

If you’ve ever had to chase unpaid invoices, this blog is for you…

An image accompanying advice for small business owners about pursuing unpaid invoices
Advice for small business owners about pursuing unpaid invoices

Any small business owner will probably have a few stories about unpaid invoices. To a sole trader or entrepreneur, the lack of payment for work carried out in good faith represents a uniquely frustrating issue. It can also have a disproportionately large impact on profitability, affecting everything from overdraft charges to the person or company’s ability to pay salaries and dividends. This situation is compounded by the effort required to claw back owed monies, often from companies who are desperate to stall and procrastinate until the last possible moment.

This is the situation G75 Media recently found itself in. We’re no strangers to unpaid invoices – of the 96 invoices we filed one year, 21 were paid late (though all were eventually settled). Every late payment had to be laboriously chased up, while three overdue invoices from one particularly troublesome client led to debt recovery proceedings. We’d worked with this client on a weekly basis since May 2014, but our working relationship ended as a direct result of these payment issues.

What can you do to protect yourself against unpaid invoices?

Ultimately, even the most organised of sole traders and small businesses may find themselves out of pocket if a client isn’t able or willing to settle on time. However, these steps should help to minimise the risk of clients making a conscious decision not to pay what they owe:

  1. Make your payment terms clear at the start of any working relationship. Inform a new client in writing that your invoices will require settlement within a specific time period. Ideally, you should request client confirmation that they approve these terms – a one-sentence email from your main contact is perfectly sufficient.
  2. Submit invoices on a regular schedule. G75 Media invoices every client on the last working day of each month. Each invoice contains an itemised list of work carried out that month, leaving no ambiguity about what has (and hasn’t) been done.
  3. Include bank details on the invoice. Clients can’t stall by claiming ignorance about payment methods if each invoice lists your bank’s sort code and account number. Publish details of your payment terms and add a sentence like “unpaid invoices may be handed over to a debt collection agency” for clarity.
  4. Don’t accept cheques. Some firms in more traditional industries still prefer to pay by cheque, which provides an ideal excuse if payment isn’t received – “it must have got lost in the post”. Cheques can also bounce, unlike a BACS transfer.
  5. Keep a detailed spreadsheet with notes of every submitted invoice number, the date it was submitted, and who it was sent to. This allows you to see at a glance whether any invoices from previous months are still outstanding. G75 Media’s policy is to begin chasing up invoices on the last working day of the month after submission.
  6. Don’t pursue unpaid invoices by phone. Instead, forward your original invoice-bearing email to the client with a note asking them to ensure settlement within an acceptable time period. A single email thread is far tidier than multiple ones, especially if messages subsequently end up flying back and forth between different people/departments at the client’s side.
  7. Remain calm. If clients are happy to default on an invoice due date, they’re not going to be swayed by the knowledge you can’t pay yourself a dividend. Emotional appeals will cut no ice, and nor will (understandable) frustration. Remain calm, factual, polite and unapologetic in requesting what’s rightfully yours.
  8. Set a deadline. Instead of tossing and turning in bed at night, set a point at which you will delegate matters to a specialist (see point 9 below). G75 Media gives companies one month’s grace to resolve outstanding invoices, which are occasionally caused by an account manager forgetting to forward them on and thereby missing that month’s payment cycle.
  9. Instruct a debt recovery firm to issue a Letter Before Action. You might need to use specialist firms if the client is based in a different part of the UK, or overseas. The company G75 Media uses has had very positive results with LBAs, which are emailed and posted to the client. At this point, you may have to withdraw from any further correspondence.
  10. If the LBA doesn’t work, initiate full debt recovery proceedings. This will cost a significant percentage of your original invoice, and many debt collection firms won’t be interested in three-figure sums. Even so, it’s better to get 75 per cent of something than 100 per cent of nothing. This is the point where you step back entirely, and let events run their course.

Because we’ve always taken a proactive approach to unpaid invoices, G75 Media has endured very few bad debts in our 16-year history. One or two firms went bust before they paid us (including the failed publishing house Prior & Partners and the endlessly rebranding commercial property developer then known as Fresh Start Living), while a couple of entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to simply vanish and block all attempts at contact. However, it’s been years since we last submitted an invoice which was subsequently written off as a bad debt.

Today, G75 Media is discerning about the companies we work for, conducting Companies House checks and researching each prospective client. We submit a legally binding, solicitor-approved contract for services to new clients before work commences, insisting they agree to various terms (including payment schedules) before work commences. And we don’t continue working with companies who have more than one outstanding invoice – our resources are too precious to waste on non-payers!

We would urge anyone with a small business to follow the advice outlined above. Due diligence and a detailed paper trail won’t always protect you from defaults, but it should minimise the number of unpaid invoices appearing on your year-end balance sheet…

Fifteen years and counting…

It’s been exactly 15 years since G75 Media was founded – and it’s been quite a ride.

It’s easy to forget that even the largest businesses usually have humble beginnings. Today, we think of Morrisons as a vast supermarket empire, but it started out back in 1899 as an egg and butter stall in Bradford – a town arguably more famous as the birthplace of G75 Media’s founder, Neil Cumins. It’s tempting to assume Microsoft has always been a software leviathan, but Bill Gates and Paul Allen initially worked out of an Albuquerque garage. Coincidentally, G75 Media was also founded in a garage – a garage conversion, to be specific, in a suburb of East Kilbride whose postcode gave the business its name. We’ve since moved to a fine Georgian building in the heart of Glasgow, but our original home is in the photo above.


Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest our modest copywriting agency has much in common with Morrisons or Microsoft. Even so, with 60 per cent of British businesses failing within three years of startup, we’re delighted that we are celebrating our 15th anniversary today. Launching a new company just a few weeks after the Northern Rock debacle wasn’t ideal timing, and neither was attempting to specialise in property journalism just as the housing market went into a steep decline.


Green shoots swiftly trampled


When we made it to 2010, and the much-discussed green shoots of economic recovery were spotted alongside a new coalition Government, we thought the turbulent times were finally behind us. Then came the Scottish independence referendum, from which the country has yet to recover. Then came the unnecessary chaos of Brexit. Then there was a global pandemic that led to incalculably damaging restrictions on our freedom, the horrifying return of war in Europe, endless political upheaval…


Through it all, G75 Media has calmly ploughed a furrow of linguistic excellence. Today, we’ve become a well-established media brand, serving a dozen clients on both sides of the Atlantic. We switch from UK to US English without even thinking, adopting American terminology and cultural references before switching back to the King’s English for our housebuilder, optometry and magazine clients. At a conservative estimate, Neil has written over ten thousand articles in his career to date. You can view a few examples on G75 Media’s Portfolio page.


Discretion where it matters


While a few copywriters regard themselves as fledgling celebrities, and a few media agencies take themselves far too seriously, G75 Media has never been obsessed with statistics or social media likes. Much of our work is printed in magazines rather than published online. We’re routinely tasked with white label copywriting, where someone else’s byline appears beside our lovingly crafted copy. We take far more pride in submitting high-quality copywriting than we do in being recognised for it, though two national awards reflect the consistently high calibre of our content production and copywriting services. And if you ever decide to Google G75 Media, you’ll see a brand with solidly five-star reviews.


Unlike many of our contemporaries, we’ve survived and thrived over the last 15 years. It’d be foolish to predict what the next decade-and-a-half will bring after so much economic, political and social turbulence. Come what may, we’ll continue to deliver premium copywriting to discerning clients, ahead of schedule and above expectations. If your brand or business could benefit from our award-winning copywriting services, you know what to do…

Another high-profile award for G75 Media!

G75 Media is delighted to announce that our founder, award-winning writer Neil Cumins, has just been honoured at the 2021 Global CEO Excellence Awards. Neil won the Content Production Business Leader of the Year trophy, in recognition of G75 Media’s journalism and copywriting services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Global CEO Excellence Awards are an international celebration of small businesses and C-suite executives. CEO Monthly magazine is read by 60,000 business leaders and executives around the world, and award nominees had to “demonstrate expertise within a given field, dedication to customer service and commitment to excellence and innovation.” CEO Monthly undertook an in-depth evaluation of each contender’s skills and services, while the market reputation of each nominee was also taken into consideration.

Commenting on becoming an award-winning writer for the second time, Neil said: “There have been some tough moments over the last year, trying to keep the business on track through unprecedented challenges. Winning this award is more than an honour – it feels like we’ve drawn a line under the pandemic. It’s also great to be able to describe myself as a multiple award-winning writer, though I’ll probably leave that off my business cards!”

G75 Media is now among an elite group of content production and copywriting agencies who have won multiple awards over different decades. Our first win came in 2010 in the national Freelancer of the Year awards, and our latest trophy has arrived 11 years later. We hope more commendations will follow in the years and decades ahead; in the meantime, we’d be delighted to discuss our copywriting and journalism services with prospective clients.

Ten tips for making your home sell quickly

Making your home sell quickly involves more than choosing the right agent. It also requires you to maximise its appeal

You don’t need to live in a large or luxurious house to make the most of its appeal. Over the last year, house prices have soared, and many properties have sold within days of being listed. From £100,000 city studios to £1 million country piles, it’s a seller’s market here in 2021 – yet there are still plenty of things motivated sellers can do to maximise the appeal of their homes.

Small changes around the house can assist with making your home sell quickly
Small changes around the house can assist with making your home sell quickly

The level of interest in your property often has more to do with presentation than anything other than the all-important location. It’s obvious from a glance whether a property has been loved and cared for, or neglected and overlooked. You can’t do much about your home’s location or the condition of neighbouring properties, but a quick sale can often be expedited with some easy tweaks and tips.

A little goes a long way

As a property journalist of almost twenty years’ standing, and having recently bought and sold myself, I’m continually surprised by how little effort people put into presenting homes which are for sale. You might consider it acceptable to leave the toilet seat up without scrubbing the pan, but buyers may not be so understanding. That teetering pile of paperwork on the home office desk isn’t just a nuisance for whoever has to photograph the room – it suggests a chronic lack of storage. And a weed-strewn front garden could stop people attending scheduled viewings, since subconscious decisions about a property are often made even before the front door has opened.

With that in mind, G75 Media has compiled a ten-point checklist for our estate agent and property marketing clients to hand out to their own customers. These ten simple tips on making your home sell quickly won’t just help us when we come to provide our award-winning freelance property journalism services. They’ll impress vendors and valuers, too. Crucially, they’ll increase the sense of pride in a home, which shines through when conducting viewings and persuading people to buy the property…

  1. Clean and clean again. Our first tip for making your home sell quickly is encapsulated in the photo above. Scrub and polish every unit, appliance, skirting board or window.
  2. Ensure every light works. Pools of light add brightness to your home, whereas dead bulbs infer neglect. The kitchen shot above sparkles with light, and looks better for it.
  3. Eradicate clutter. Don’t hide it in cupboards – bin it. Clutter suggests the home is too small to be practical, so ensure floors and exposed surfaces have lots of clear space.
  4. Optimise the approach to your home. Remove weeds, oil hinges, add plants and wash the windows. Maximise first-impression kerb appeal, or risk people walking away.
  5. Eliminate odours. Scrub the oven, wash fabrics, leave every window open for a day… Do everything in your power to minimise smells, which can be very off-putting.
  6. Do a DIY list. Walk round and note down every squeaky hinge, paint chip and loose handle. Repair them all, to make the property look well-maintained rather than tired.
  7. Clear the house of children and pets prior to viewings. Avoid unnecessary mess and impromptu embarrassment, and ensure visitors can wander round in peace and quiet.
  8. Practice a sales pitch. This is another useful step in making your home sell quickly. What’s included, and what’s great? Celebrate positives and downplay negatives.
  9. Start and end in the best room. Building on the last point, first impressions count, and the last thing viewers see will stay with them. Make both your home’s best room.
  10. Let people wander round themselves. After the tour, give viewers the opportunity to wander around again without you. This is often when buying decisions are made.